Soul One
by intodust
Summary: It would be called magic if it were not so completely rational in every way." Or, of unseasonably cold weather and ghost-hunting.
1. I

Soul One  
by intodust

Disclaimer: Dark Angel belongs to 20th Century Fox and Cameron/Eglee Productions. The quotation in the summary comes from Robert Pirsig and is both longer and more valuable in its entirety.

* * *

She watches as his chest erupts like flame, needles of blood arching outwards, and she can't move. She knows it's a dream, but that doesn't make a difference as she stands before him and watches him die, watches as dark shapes materialize from the shadows and drag her away, camouflage-clad demons with M16s instead of pitchforks. His eyes are the last thing she sees, all the shades of winter and spring, and she feels them watching her for the rest of her life. She drowns in an expanding ocean of that color, hits the bottom and realizes that she's miles away from the bay. 

Max wakes to snow in Seattle. She disentangles herself from unnecessarily heavy blankets, peels sweat-damp sheets from her skin and dresses quickly. She stands at the window, wraps her hands around a mug of bad coffee. She stole the mug from him, though he says he gave it to her, and she had to scrape the bottom of the tin to get enough grounds. She watches the flurries come down, drifting soft and white against a gray sky, and she's late for work for the second time this week.

She arrives at his apartment sometime later, after hours of packages and unseasonably cold weather. She breaks in - though it's not really breaking in if he's expecting her - picks the lock, anyway, and shakes water from her hair. The snow's melting, not meant to last, and the streets are already covered in water and slush. She crosses her arms, feels beads of what's technically liquid ice sliding past her collar, down the back of her shirt, and hears him push away from the computer. "It's me," she says when he's close enough to see that for himself. She turns around, leans against the thick windowframe and her jacket presses water against the fabric of her shirt.

"It's you," Logan agrees. He frowns at her. "You're dripping."

"Melting," she corrects.

"You want a towel?" She's not sure if he's more concerned about the condition of the floorboards or the fact that she looks more like a drowned cat than one of Jam Pony's finest. Considering that both she and the floorboards will survive, she thinks, it's probably fifty/fifty.

"I'll live." She waits for him to tell her why he called, what he needs. Not that she minds coming over, taking a break, but his message was shaded with that particular shade of urgency, the one she associates with save-the-world missions and scraping blackened sauce from pans after a broken date. She wonders if it's an experience he's had; she, at least, gives him advance notice.

He hums in agreement or deference, looks past her to the window. "It snowed," he says, sounding surprised.

"I noticed that," she says, one corner of her mouth twitching upwards. He shrugs, turns away. She listens to the hush-whisper of rubber across the floor and follows him into his office. The frosted panes of the walls are the color of melting snow, the slush on the streets. She doesn't mention this as she leans against the silver edge closest to her. He returns to his desk, shuffles some papers. She wonders if he's looking for anything in particular or if he's putting on a show. She watches with amusement, either way, and then she remembers that she's on a schedule. "You called," she reminds him.

"Yeah, I did," he says. He meets her eyes and she realizes with a jolt that they're the exact shade she saw in her dream. Somehow she'd thought she'd gotten that wrong. "You believe in ghosts?"

"Isn't it a little late for Halloween?" she asks. He tilts his head to the side, as much agreement as she's going to get. She hasn't answered his question, and she won't. "Why?"

"Because," he says, and he turns his back to her as he speaks. She wonders if she would have trouble hearing him if she didn't have superpowers. She wonders if he would turn his back to her if she didn't. "One of my informants thinks he's seen one."

She raises her eyebrows and wonders if he's asking her to go ghost-hunting with him. She can think of worse ways to spend an evening. "Eyes Only does ghostbusting now?"

"Only when said ghost is supposed to be Darryl Halovich." He doesn't, of course, tell her who Darryl Halovich is, but she's used to it. It's a game; she lets him win and then she kicks his ass at chess. Quid pro quo.

She plays along this time, too, adds this to the mental ledger that is What They Owe Each Other. At the moment, it's more like What He Owes Her and she's looking forward to collecting on the debts. "Darryl Halovich?"

"He ran for mayor in what was arguably the last free election," he says. He presses a button on the keyboard and brings up a full-screen photo. He was okay-looking, she decides, for a politician. "Disappeared before the actual election took place."

"So, what, you think he's returned from the dead for vengeance?"

"No, I think he didn't die," he says. "And I wanna know what happened."

"Thirst for knowledge's a good thing," she says. "Good for you, according to Normal."

He looks at her with exasperation. She decides it's better than downright annoyance, and besides, he'd get bored if everything went his way all the time. "You doing anything tonight?"

At least he's asking before he rearranges her schedule. She shrugs. "Not every day a girl gets the chance to find a ghost."

"That a no?" he asks.

She nods once, a slow movement of muscle beneath skin. "I'll swing by once it gets dark," she says. "No fun in hunting ghosts in broad daylight."

He rolls his eyes, does his best to look stern. It would work better if he weren't fighting a grin. "Right," he says. "No fun."

She pushes away from the wall, rolls her shoulders. Her jacket's mostly dry and her hair swings in her face as she turns to leave, a wave of black. She shakes it out of the way, calls over her shoulder. "See ya."

"Later," he returns. He's typing, a clatter of depression and release, by the time she reaches the couch and she's at the door by the time he adds (and he's not shouting, which means he knows she's still inside, which means he's paying attention), "Stay dry . . ." Which is the daily-life equivalent of "be careful," and her smile doesn't fade until she reaches Jam Pony and Normal tells her that due to the extreme and unexpected meteorological conditions, she's working an extra hour.

-

To be continued, in theory.


	2. II

Disclaimer in Chapter One. Definitions are from the Jargon File.

* * *

Hacking is defined as an appropriate application of ingenuity. This directly follows the idea that the meaning of hack is "an extremely subtle and profound one which defies articulation." 

This, he thinks, applies equally to what he does and to what Max does, to line after line of perfectly written code, poems in a language unintelligible to most eyes, and to the precise location of a pinprick to unlock a door and the amount of pressure necessary to break through plate-glass windows. There is an equation to find her trajectory, the path along which she flew, but he hasn't bothered to solve it. He knows the answer already, so why bother?

Darryl Halovich left behind a wife and a child when he disappeared. The newspapers said that he lost his life, an idea which struck a much-younger Logan as strange, for certainly all he had to do was find it. The image of a ghostly man wandering the streets in search for something he would never find (because what does a life look like, anyway?) gave him nightmares. Then, of course, he grew up and the fantastic faded as the story became rife with political significance, one more point along the timeline that measures the increase of blatant corruption.

The timeline. Right. He frowns at the pile of printouts in front of him, the pages strewn across his desk, and tries to envision the organization that will allow them to qualify for such a title. Even the thought is daunting. He will focus on one case at a time, one name, one person. One ghost.

He does not, he tells himself, believe in ghosts, in the haunted-house sense.

The sun is setting outside his windows. The windowframes divide the panorama into a collection of scenes and it is impossible to view in its entirety. The snow has melted, leaving a thin veneer of water in its place, and it reflects red sunlight like diluted blood or Communion wine. It will be dark soon; Max will be coming. And she does, true to her words, as soon as the sun disappears completely. She startles him, something he should be used to, when she appears directly behind him at his desk, and he shivers, tells himself that ghosts, among other things, are nothing to be afraid of. Ghosts, unlike said other things, do not exist.

"So, what does one bring to a ghost-hunt?" she asks, not seeing, or ignoring, his reaction.

"I wouldn't know," he says. "And since we're not hunting anyone, much less a ghost, I'm not sure it matters."

She shrugs, her eyes darkening, and he's almost surprised when she doesn't call him a spoilsport, tell him that he's not any fun. "Depends on what you call a hunt," she says.

"Eyes Only doesn't hunt," he says almost primly, as if hunting were a sort of perversion, something journalists-of-the-people were above. Or supposed to be above. "Tracks, maybe, or busts . . ."

"So," she amends, "how does one prepare for ghostbusting?" That, he thinks, was what she was asking all along. She's having too much fun, he thinks, which isn't by any means a bad thing, except that this is real and he thinks that soon he'll be too tired for wordgames, to finish what he's started.

"Well," he says. "Never having had the experience, I honestly can't say."

"First time for everything, huh?" she asks. He nods, feeling like some sort of lawn ornament, one of those dipping birds, up and down, up and down. "You ready?"

"Yeah," he says, gathering his accessories. Keys, phone, wallet, gun (even though ghosts aren't tangible, one corner of his mind points out). She waits for him, waits in the hall while he locks the door behind them, and they continue on to the elevator. He stares at their reflection in the mirrored walls as they descend. She's La Femme Nikita dressed for an assassination and he looks like he should be drinking coffee in some café with outrageous prices and a name unpronounceable without years of college. A most unlikely partnership, he thinks, especially for activities like this.

Even the air in the garage is cool, chill with evening and past snows. Her motorcycle is parked beside his car, sleek black lines beside a collection of dusty blue, cementing the idea of oddities, strange bedfellows. That, he decides, was a very poor choice of words, and he busies himself with unlocking the Aztek, transferring inside. The closing of his door is the division of two worlds and they make their way through the Seattle night as fellow travelers, isolated from the outside as if they were making their way through the stars, the cold, silent vacuum of space.

But Max isn't content to sit still and watch the world they're passing by; she fiddles with the radio and the CD player, decides that jazz is good travelling music, and when she leans back, he has to admit that she's right.

It's sleeting by the time they arrive at the scene of the sighting, streaks of hard white across the windshield. They will fade by morning; it's too early for any accumulation, for the snow to stay. The clouds are low over the horizon, heavy over the water; the nearby warehouses disappear in a haze of mist.

"He's haunting a warehouse?" she asks.

"Or hiding out in one," he says.

"You'd think he'd have better taste," she says. She pauses thoughtfully. "Unless ghosts can only haunt where they're killed."

"He's not," he begins, and then he catches her eye and she grins. "It's the old Lexington unit," he says.

"Lexington. Got it." She opens the door, admitting a burst of cold wind, and leaves him alone to wait. He wonders if she'll find Halovich, drag him back to the car and deposit him inside, glare at the man until he answers Logan's questions. Maybe she won't find anything at all and she'll tell him that he owes her dinner. Though he wouldn't mind retreating to the safe recesses of his apartment, what Halovich could, at least in theory, tell him is worth this wait, this foray into the vast wilderness of relatively isolated coastline.

Well, the coastline part's accurate, anyway.

He crosses his arms and considers turning up the heat, but he's not sure that Max's tolerance of extreme temperatures extends to warmth, too. Still, if she's going to be gone for any length of time –

Something moves in front of him, barely visible through the sleet flickering like television static. He narrows his eyes, reaches to lock the doors without altering the direction of his gaze. It's probably Max, he knows, or maybe his informant or one of the man's fellow denizens, but ghost stories are returning unbidden to his mind and he wonders if Halovich is the vengeful sort. He sees it again, a blur of movement, and he almost dials his cell phone, calls Max's beeper. But she's probably not carrying it, and even if she is, it's possible that she's found something, that telling her to return now would mean forgoing whatever answers she might bring.

The warmth in the car, faint as it is, is suddenly oppressive, hypnotic in that it claims the majority of his attention. He stabs at the heater, turns it down and looks out the window for the movement. He doesn't see it and decides that its source must have gone inside one of the warehouses, someone looking for shelter, or maybe it was all in his mind to begin with. In the background, Ella hits a high note and he watches the sleet come down, concentrates on not falling asleep and scans the area around him, looking for movement or Max, coming through the storm like a triumphant Valkyrie, Halovich's soul in hand and frost silvering her hair as she walks through the night.

-


	3. III

Disclaimer in Chapter One. There's a line from an Eagles song towards the end, too.

* * *

They walk side by side down an old dirt road and their shoes send clouds of dust swirling around them. The sun is warm through his jeans and it heats the leather jacket she's knotted around her waist. They walk side by side past ancient trees, through solitary forests, and reach the end of the road as the sunset streaks orange and red over gnarled branches. 

This is not, of course, real, which is not to say that it doesn't happen. When he wakes, he thinks he can still feel the heat of the sun on senseless skin (he remembers that he should do three impossible things before breakfast and wonders if this counts), but it fades when he looks out the window at the cold forever Seattle night, the sharp geometric angles of distant buildings and the sleet-turned-rain falling in accordance with an unknowable algorithm.

Max, he sees, has not yet returned, and he's glad that she didn't find him napping on the job, taking advantage of her willingness to come with him. Not that she would mind, he knows, but the evening would be tinged with a metallic aftertaste, guilt at the edges, no matter how hard he would try to ignore it. That, he thinks, would not be tolerable. Snow in Seattle is rare enough; snowy nights spent ghost-hunting are the sort of thing one should treasure forever, along with memories of the long lonely stretch of road from here to the Canadian border (a path which he hasn't taken for a long time, but which he replays in his mind, just in case) and the time his car broke down on the way to his uncle's cabin in the middle of a freak snowstorm and Leah didn't stop teasing him about the empty gas tank until three in the morning, when they were both too tired to do anything but laugh and murmur into sleep.

Still, he thinks, she should be back soon. How long can it take to verify the presence of a former politician – or anyone at all, for that matter? Either he is or he isn't. Logan crosses his arms and frowns at the clock, the digital display glowing a faint orange in the car's dimness. It's ridiculous for him to be worried and he tells himself that he's not. If anything, he's impatient, in a hurry to get home and get to work, or at least to bed. It's been a long day and he thinks he should have brought a thermos, coffee or tea or some source of caffeine. But that would be sort of like having a picnic while Max is wandering around in the storm, and even if she wouldn't mind, he would. That's how it works, and if it's not broken, why fix it?

Yin and yang, he thinks, are overrated. He has nothing against balance, but it would be nice if for once they would be on the same track, in sync. If his good days would coincide with hers, and if they could spend drizzly afternoons in an equal and companionable melancholy. Instead they have a sort of strange homeostasis; they share a dream and then tear each other to pieces in order to keep the balance.

He blinks and pushes himself upright in his seat, as if proper posture will keep sentimentality and the haze of dreams at a safe distance. His vision is tinted with orange, a remnant of strange visions, and he sighs. Dreams are not supposed to have physical aftereffects.

It occurs to him, finally, that the glow is not in his imagination. A warehouse is on fire, the crackling of flames audible when he unrolls the window. He flinches at the cold breeze, the beads of rain thrown like shards on the wind. Shouldn't the water be putting out the blaze? But they're not enough and a warehouse is burning. He stares at the pyre, flames racing along joists and dancing on the roof. Its reflection on the water is an impressionist painting, all soft lines and blurred curves of color.

He narrows his eyes, calculating distance, and realizes that the burning building is the Lexington unit, the one to which he sent Max. He really should have expected that. Statistics, he's rapidly learning, do not lean in their favor, especially when the consequences of such are high.

He scans the night for movement, for Max emerging from the blaze smeared with soot, answers or apologies in her eyes. When she does not come, he reaches into the backseat, assembling the wheelchair with a speed borne of practice and necessity, an adrenaline boost. Not that he knows what he will do, what difference he will make, but the painting's rapidly going from impressionist to photo-realistic. He transfers as quickly as he can, slams the door behind him. The rain is liquid smoke and his eyes tear as he nears the warehouse, the hissing of tires cutting through water almost lost in the wind.

He stares up at the burning black hulk, the bay's unfathomable depths running alongside the blaze. Fire and water, and where the hell is Max? The snow is already melting, especially this close to the flames, and dark clouds cover the sky. He doesn't see her and has a sudden vision of hell. He coughs and moves closer, shouts, "Max!" There is no need for stealth; the blaze, he thinks, will have drawn the attention of anyone nearby, undead (or whatever it is ghosts are supposed to be) or not.

How strange, he thinks, to lose her to a warehouse blaze with snow melting around him. How strange, how terribly ironic, and he will not let it be true.

He pushes closer to the building, close enough to feel the heat searing across his face, and discovers that he actually has a fear of fire. Pyrophobia, he thinks. A really bad time to find out, though arguably said fear didn't exist until right now.

Something crashes inside and sparks shoot up through the fallen ceiling. He hears glass shattering and wonders what the Lexington unit stored, if the building were truly abandoned or if it had been Halovich's home, if it were not only a building burning, but the material aspects of a man's life, and Max.

Wind throws smoke into his face and he closes his eyes as they burn, pushes himself away from the hottest part of the blaze, and as his vision clears, he sees something moving through the smoky haze, behind the building, where poured concrete meets the water. It is a flash of movement, a blur, inconclusive, and he goes after it; it is all he has. Cats don't like water, but she would head to the sea if necessary.

The air is clearer back there and he takes as deep of a breath as he dares, forcing enough air into his lungs so that he can call out again. What started the fire, he wonders, and is the timing entirely coincidental? He thinks that he should have considered this sooner, though he's not sure what difference it would have made, as he can't see staying in the car and hoping Max finds him eventually.

He blinks, feels water streaming through the soot on his face, and he senses movement behind him, turns into the blow and feels a stinging handprint and the corresponding mental explosion and then the darkness of the bay rushing to meet him.

The water is cold, he thinks, cold, and very, very dark, and he's not free-falling so much as drifting in a general downward direction. He reaches up, his hands cutting through dirty water, and sees the blaze from a distance, distorted as it is by the waves caused by his entrance. It's beautiful in a dangerous, destructive way and he struggles upward for a moment before realizing that he's not making any progress. He's caught on something and the surface is fading ever-further into the distance, and really, he thinks, this does not look good. Starry-eyed messiah meets a violent farewell, he thinks as his arms grow tired and his lungs begin to burn with lack of oxygen, and where, where is Max?

-


	4. IV

Disclaimer in Chapter One.

* * *

The sky is falling, almost, and she's choking on soot and ash. Really it's just the roof, thick beams crashing to the floor, sending sparks into the air. Beyond that, visible in the holes they've left, is the sky, where it's always been. If she squints she can see stars through the smoke. No sign of ghosts now; she doesn't even know what started the fire, or at least who started the fire. She's relatively certain that the cause was a spark applied to the trails of gasoline clear as water that crossed the floor like snail-tracks. She wonders if ghosts can light matches, can flick lighters, or if the difference in corporeality disallows that. 

Right now, she knows, is not the time for that debate.

She can hear Logan shouting, faintly over the crackling of flames, the auditory assault. Something shatters in the distance, a pane of glass breaking like windchimes over the drumbeats of falling metal. He's calling for her, looking for her. She hopes he won't come inside; he should have stayed in the car, where it's warm and dry. After all, she's been in worse situations. She thinks of him listening to his music and watching the fire reflect on the dark water of the bay, and knows there was no way he would have done that, no way he would leave her here. Not that he can do anything to help.

The heat is becoming more than oppressive, dangerous, and she dashes for the door. There's nothing to be gained by waiting, nothing to be found. Any evidence is, literally, going up in smoke. She knows that there is nothing to be saved here.

She feels the heat of the door-handle through her gloves and the scent of charred leather is oddly real against the backdrop of industrial destruction, all the colors of armageddon. She wrenches the door open and throws herself into the night, breathing deeply before she realizes that the air is not fresh; it's just not as smoke-filled as it was inside. It's cold. It's sleeting. If not for the chemical burn, the fire would already be out, she thinks.

She jogs a short distance away, looking for Logan. Is there another way in? Surely he wouldn't have gone in after her, and if he had, she would have noticed, would have heard him enter.

There, the edge of movement disappearing behind the burning building, the swish-rush of wheels through melting snow, smoke-gray ice. Is he going to find her? She knows he's going to look, and she follows him, fighting her way through clouds whose particles tear at her skin, minuscule pieces of glass, slivers of metal.

She rounds the corner in time to see a figure running in the distance, blurred through the haze of smoke and water, fading into the night. Not Logan, though she's sure she saw him come back here.

And suddenly she knows where he is, narrows her eyes as she stares into the infinite depths of the bay, one small piece of the Pacific Ocean. Not all messages-in-bottles wash up onto shore; some are lost forever.

But there, there by the edge, the concrete pier, are ripples, ever-widening. There, where he went under.

Where he was pushed?

She leaps into the water, feels her body carving through air, and then she's cutting through water, blinking at the sudden chill and looking for him through sheets of black. He can't have been under long, she thinks, as though she can will it to be true. And then she spies him, a glimmer of movement below, falling ever farther. She dives after him, one hand reaching out, and she knows that she's going to grasp nothing, that water will slide between her fingers and he will be gone forever.

She clasps an outstretched hand, concrete and real, and pulls, striding for the surface. There is no time to check; all she can do is hope that she is not too late.

It is not, she thinks, enough. Hope never is.

They break the surface and she gasps, hauls him up, lifting him out of the water and shoving him onto the concrete. Something glints in the water and she reaches down, touches cold metal and wants to laugh; of course he could have made it out on his own, if he hadn't been trapped by something he couldn't feel. She treads water, tosses the wheelchair onto the pier and then climbs out herself, looking for the figure she saw earlier.

Nothing but the wail of distant sirens, the crackling of flames and the ricochet of sleet off of the mottled cement. He is, she sees, breathing, a sublime knowledge. He is. He is.

She crouches beside him, pushes ocean-damp hair out of her face and his eyes open, searching. He coughs, braces himself as he sits up, tries to catch his breath. His exhalations are mist in the air. "Max," he says after a moment.

"Yup," she agrees, wrapping her arms around her knees. The wheelchair is on its side a distance away. She will have to retrieve it in a few minutes, but right now, she doesn't think she could touch it.

"The warehouse," he says, crossing his arms. He blinks water from his eyes and she wonders belatedly what's actually in the ocean, whether the bay is currently playing host to any toxic substances.

"Is burning," she says.

"There was a man," he says, looking around as though he expects the man to still be there, watching.

She shrugs, keeps her eyes on the giant bonfire ahead. "I went after you, instead."

"Oh," he says, and she's not sure what to make of his tone. She shudders, suddenly, remembering her dream and how much darker the ocean really is. "We should go," he said. "It's cold." She wants to tell him that he doesn't mind, and then she remembers that he does, that maybe the warehouse isn't providing enough heat, after all. She nods, stands and retrieves his wheelchair.

"There was gas on the floor," she says. "I'm thinking maybe your ghost doesn't like you."

"It was a set-up?"

"Who can resist a good ghost story?" she asks, and she waits by his side. When he's done, she follows him around the warehouse, back to the waiting car.

"We should call someone," he says once they're inside, once the doors are closed. "The fire department."

"I heard sirens," she says. "Probably already on their way. If we wait, they'll wanna know why we were here."

"Right," he says. He starts the car, turns the heater up as high as it will go, casting an apologetic look in her direction. She shrugs and pretends not to notice that he's shivering. When they pull away, she turns to look at the warehouse, flames and smoke and crystal stars above, ancient as time itself.

It's good to be alive, she thinks. The CD skips in the car player and the music stutters. She silences the noise and listens to the sleet on the roof, instead. She closes her fingers over the memory of faint heat and the texture of skin, leans against the head-rest, and he drives.

xxxxx

The shower in the guest room hisses and then there's the thrum of water on tile. He should take a shower, himself; who knows what lurks in the shadowy bay depths. A change of clothes wasn't enough; he still feels the cold water pressing against him, pressing into him. But it's much easier to sit here on the couch, to watch the clear night sky and know that somewhere the smoke is still fading.

And he can't forget what it's like to be drowning, for the world to narrow to one pinprick of light and then nothing at all. Dark and cold and so easy to sleep. It was a set-up, she'd said. Someone had tried to kill him and nearly succeeded. He should start running background checks on all of his informants.

The shower stops and he frowns, glances at his miraculously-still-ticking watch and wonders at the passing of time. Maybe this is shock, though he's certainly been through worse.

A few minutes later and she stands in the doorway, boots in hand, tilts her head and frowns at him. "You have a fever," she says. He raises his eyebrows at her. "Organic version of thermal imaging technology," she explains, coming to sit by him on the couch. She drops her boots with a thud onto the floor, picks one up and loosens the lacing.

"Handy," he says, wondering what she expects him to do. Is it "feed a cold, starve a fever," or the other way around?

"I guess," she says. She finishes tying one boot and begins on the other. "You want soup or something?" she asks with a slight frown. He dares not take her up on the offer.

"Not really hungry," he says. "Just tired."

She bites her lip, something like genuine concern in her eyes. She was able to rescue him from ocean depths, but the mundaneness of a fever is something she hasn't yet learned how to control. "You need anything?" she asks, like she's offering to run down to the corner grocery and buy him orange juice and a crossword-puzzle book. He blinks; it's a pre-Pulse memory and has no place here.

"No," he says. "Just gonna get some sleep."

She nods, stands and places one hand on her hip. "See ya," she says.

"See ya," he echoes. Her hair swirls in the stifling air as she turns to go. When she disappears from his vision he stretches out, limbs like lead, and closes his eyes. He dreams of the cold grasp of hands underwater, a current stronger than electricity, and when he wakes with the taste of smoke fever-hot at the back of his throat, there is a smell which he gradually recognizes as burnt chicken, and rattling in the kitchen. She is there, more real than ghosts.

He sleeps, suspended from reality and confident that it will be there when he awakens.

* * *

The End. 

"Light is billions of years old by the time we see it. From the beginning of time right past us into the future. Nothing is ancient in the universe." - Mulder


End file.
